


Fleeting

by iskanderthebi



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: F/F, set during mgs3, the boss lives au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21991819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iskanderthebi/pseuds/iskanderthebi
Summary: She stood out like something godly, something that did not belong in their world, not even in a field of flowers as beautiful as those. Her back was towards Eva and the pale gold hair curled gently behind her neck, silky and fair beneath the sun.‘I did not ask for you,’ she said.At the final confrontation, it is Eva who goes to The Boss
Relationships: The Boss/EVA
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Fleeting

It was the smell of the flowers that first gave away the field was near. The damn flowers, she had warned her too. A flowering field, white and untouched. What more fitting a place to die. 

Eva called out to Snake, pointed in the other direction where a plane was waiting for them. A single plane, one last flight, and that chapter closed and locked and never to be talked about again. Her broken body yearned for it, to stop the ache and lies and move ahead. She was tired, so tired of it all. The care in which she had to pick her words, how she held herself, what accent to use. She hated it. 

But Snake knew, as she did too, it was not yet time for the end. He had looked at the plane, breathing heavily through his nose, dried blood carving his cheek like paint. She pitied him, she supposed. Oh, they all had suffered, but his pain had a different taste to it, the type most tongues would recoil from. She pitied him and suddenly understood him better than any other creature on earth. 

Snake turned towards the field and she knocked the revolver hard against the back of his head. He fell onto her, and she cried out at the pressure on her side, hurriedly grabbed him beneath the arms and pulled him towards some reeds nearby. The explanation would come later, she could think of new lies at the drop of a hat. Something more important mattered now. 

She tucked the gun into her belt, one hand against her red side, and walked with purpose into the white field. 

She saw her quickly. It was hard not to see The Boss. She stood out like something godly, something that did not belong in their world, not even in a field of flowers as beautiful as those. Her back was towards Eva and the pale gold hair curled gently behind her neck, silky and fair beneath the sun. 

‘I did not ask for you,’ she said. 

Eva stopped. She would have laughed if she didn’t hurt so much inside. 

‘Of course you would recognise me without looking,’ she forced out instead, leaning heavily to her right side. ‘I won’t even ask how.’

The Boss turned. Her calm, handsome face was clean and cold and her blue eyes seemed to shimmer like the sea. She did not seem angry, though her forehead had a crease. 

‘You are still bleeding,’ she said, looking at Eva’s side. ‘He didn’t have enough medical supplies, did he? He always neglected that part of my training. He thought the pain would help him finish his job faster.’

‘He tried his best.’

‘He always does.’ Their eyes met. ‘Go away, Eva,’ she said, quite gently almost. ‘This is not how it ends.’

‘No, it isn’t.’ Eva pointed at the gun on her hip. ‘It’s empty. I am unarmed. I wish to talk.’

‘I can see that. We have nothing to talk about.’ Her cape moved with the breeze. 

Eva took a step forward. ‘Yes, we do,’ she said, barely swallowing down a wince. ‘You need to go.’

The Boss smiled. ‘No, Eva,’ she said. 

‘Yes, you do.’ Eva took another step until she was a stone throw away. ‘You need to leave, immediately. There is a second plane-‘

‘ _No_ , Eva,’ The Boss said firmly, eyeing her. ‘This day, this mission, must end only between Snake and I.’

Eva shook her head, the pain in her side forcing a splitting migraine to batter against her skull. ‘Snake cannot decide today’s end,’ she said. ‘He is in no state to make any more decisions. You are alone in this.’

‘He must.’ There was a flicker, nearly invisible, of something endearingly maternal in The Boss’ eyes. ‘I know him better than you, Eva.’ 

‘No. No you don’t. Not anymore.’

A harsh edge came to The Boss’ mouth. Whatever light came to her eyes vanished. She looked at Eva and took out a small receiver.

‘Commence the operation,’ she told it and put it back into the folds of her cape. ‘You have ten minutes, Eva. Ten minutes before MiGs will come and destroy this place. Bring him here, to me. You will not convince me of anything otherwise.’

‘Dammit, Boss,’ Eva ground through her teeth. ‘You may have known him as a boy, raised him, loved him in ways I will never know, but you do not know the man he is now. He will not handle the truth.’

‘Jack is smart and he has a will that cannot be broken. He knows what must be done, he will live with the consequences.’

‘No, he _won’t_.’ Eva angrily pointed behind her. ‘He is no longer the boy you raised, Boss. He’s not the boy you trained and taught. Not anymore. Not since Volgin.’

The memory of the torture forced them both to silence for a moment. They knew the wound of that meeting would never heal. 

‘He will-‘

‘No, he won’t,’ interrupted Eva. ‘Whatever you say, whatever you believe in him to go back to how it was before never will. You knew him, yes, but you don’t know him now, Boss. Not since that. But I do.’

The Boss turned her face to the sky, breathing slowly. Her gloves fingers deftly unbuttoned the top of her cloak and let it fall with a whisper into the flowers. 

‘Please, Boss, understand what I am trying to say.’ Eva was no stranger to the art of begging, but for once she did so without deception at its core. ‘He has changed, even I have seen it, and I have only known him for the length of this mission. He is full of anger, the type that does nothing more than destroy everything around it. He will burn up, he will not handle this.’

‘And what do you suggest I do?’ The Boss looked at her, with the weight of nations behind her gaze. ‘Turn tail and run? Abandon the mission out of personal softness? Let the chance of countries to fall to ruin because of it? Even you should know I can’t do that.’

‘You can continue your work, continue your mission some place else. Dying and passing it on is not the only way to secure the legacy. You can continue, away from this country, away from the people that knew.’

Eva itched to check the time but her gaze could not stray. The calm mask had watered down to a frown and the eyes that now stared at her hesitated. 

‘Listen to me, Boss, please,’ she pleaded. ‘Do not ask for Snake now. That will not be the way to continue your purpose. Turn and leave this place, please.’

The frown deepened. The brief lapse in The Boss’ face froze back over into a grim expression. 

‘Some things cannot be willed into change,’ she said. ‘No matter how good our intentions seem.’

‘Oh, _fuck_ intentions!’ burst out Eva, coming close and facing her squarely. ‘Don’t you understand that this is about you, Boss? That you’re too important to die?’

The outburst seemed to surprise The Boss, who looked at Eva as if seeing her anew

‘We have all failed here, can’t you see that? I failed my mission the moment you saw me, the second your eyes stripped me bare and open for you. You saw right through me and thus I failed my mission.’

The pain and fear and something different altogether sent her vision red and Eva felt reborn. 

‘Snake is no longer fit for his role, especially not for this task,’ she continued, her voice angry and deep. ‘He cares too deeply for you and burns too hot. He is unstable, unpredictable. A single medical examination would demand he be taken off the mission. He has failed.’

‘Eva-‘

‘And you’ve failed too!’ Eva felt faint. ‘You failed because you told me the truth. To me, someone you never should have trusted because nobody at all should be trusted with your truth. And yet you told me, you protected me from Volgin when he would have killed me. You showed me kindness when I deserved none and you failed too.’

Her voice broke and Eva swayed on her feet and only barely felt the strong hand take her by the elbow, hold her steady. 

‘Eva,’ said The Boss, and this time there was genuine warmth in the word. ‘Eva, look at me.’

Shaking, Eva looked up and their blue eyes met as if for the very first time. 

‘And if I go,’ The Boss continued softly. ‘What would you do?’ 

‘I’d find a body, set it up so it can be identified as yours. No country will look deeper into the report beyond checking that you are dead. That’s all they want, nothing else.’

‘And will you be able to do that in the four minutes before this place is bombed?’

‘Then I’ll just fucking shoot myself with Snake’s gun and have it be my own body that’s identified,’ she snapped, one hand gripping into The Boss’ forearm. ‘I’ve staged enough suicides before. I should be able to do it once more for myself.’

‘Eva,’ said The Boss but nothing followed the name. She stood still, frowning, searching for something in the trembling woman’s face. 

‘Call off the damn MiGs,’ miserably said Eva. 

‘Too late.’

‘Then go.’ They were the most honest words she had ever said. 

The Boss looked behind Eva, as if even between an infinite distance she would always find Snake again, as if she could see him even then, lying unconscious, his face for once at peace in that expression she had seen hundreds of times, in a dozen different lights. 

‘Alright,’ she said, but the word sounded frail even to her own ears and she said it again, firmly. ‘Alright. I will go. I will continue my mission.’

‘Please,’ breathed Eva, a dangerous confession rising quickly in her throat. ‘Please.’

‘But you-‘

‘I’ll make it. Go.’

‘Eva-‘

Eva pressed their mouths together. It was a clumsy kiss and all around too painful but it was better than talking for she was afraid her tongue would utter things she could not dare even to think. She had wanted to kiss her since she first saw her, since those blue eyes looked her way and seemed to dig right into her soul, peeling away the layers of lies and pretenses like the skin of a fruit. She loved The Boss and she feared her and she desperately wished to say nothing about it. 

Her arm slid up to The Boss’ neck to pull her even closer, ignoring the sharp ache in her mouth where her tooth had cracked during her fall. 

Eva kissed The Boss and then she kissed her a second time and a third, coaxing her lips to reciprocate, swallowing a gasp when they did. The Boss’ hand cupped her cheek in what she allowed herself to believe was tenderness, lips working against hers in a manner too gentle for women like them. There was blood in their saliva, and Eva couldn’t tell whether it was hers anymore. She felt alive and deathly scared and forced their mouths apart. 

‘Go.’

The Boss picked up her cloak, checked her watch. 

‘Two minutes.’

‘I’ll make it’

They kissed again, crashing their mouths together that hurt just as much physically as it did inside. 

‘Go.’

And The Boss ran to her white horse that stood like an obedient second shadow near the edge of the field and Eva ran the opposite way, not looking back, stumbling into the reeds and shaking Snake awake. 

‘Eva-‘

‘You fell unconscious. I let you have ten minutes rest. She didn’t come. She isn’t here.’

He immediately turned towards the field, like his soul demanded it. 

‘Why didn’t she come?’

Eva took his arm, forced him away. 

‘Did you hit me?’

Eva couldn’t help but laugh then, as the two of them struggled inside the plane and she slid into the pilot’s seat. 

‘What energy do I have, Snake,’ she said unhappily, ‘to hit you?’

She punched the plane into gear and heard a call coming in on Snake’s radio. 

‘Why wouldn’t she come?’ he said again, hand hovering above his ear piece. And then, ‘You’re crying.’

‘I’m tired, Snake,’ she said, blinking as she saw the dark shapes of incoming MiGs. ‘We were so close.’

But the MiGs turned back and they received their clear flight path to Alaska and if Eva’s smiles were tighter than before when Snake held her hand then neither commented on it. She tasted blood on her tongue and watched the blue horizon roll beneath them and hoped, in a secret, honest place inside her, that their paths would meet again. 

**Author's Note:**

> The Boss shouldn't have died thems the facts


End file.
